Hume's Passionalism And Its Practical Significance

The philosophy of David Hume, especially his study concerning human nature has had a great and deep influence over the development of western philosophy since the eighteenth century. The passionalism is the most characteristic and the most influential theory in Hume's philosophy, especially in his theory about human nature. The human nature is distinguished into two parts, namely passions and understanding. Hume inquires into the understanding in the first part of A Treatise of Human Nature, while in the second part "of the passions" and the third part "of morals", he inquires into passions. There is the relationship between understanding and passions here, too. Passionalism is a very important part in Hume's theory. Passions' nature, its origin and influence; all kinds of conditions among passions' activities; the relationships of understanding, passions, will and behaviours and so on, are the main context of Hume's passionalism.We have started to pay attention to spiritual life along with the development and the improvement of the market economy, the society and the material life in our society. However, there are still many problems in this process, which become more and more serious, for example, the self-losing of one's personality, the disappearance of one's responsibility for society and that of the sense of morals, the enormous increase of psychological problems and so on. To know and to care about passions in a sense have become more and more vital and indispensable, for there are the reasons and also the solutions of those phenomena and problems in passions.We will look closely at Hume's passionalism and its practical significance from three aspects according to the second and the third part of A Treatise of Human Nature, namely passions and human nature, passions and human behaviour, passions and real life.We at first will discuss about the nature of passions of Hume's passionalism in the first question of this text. Passion is the natural and important part of human nature, it is a kind of subjective being, which is natural and real. It ought to be paid attention to by us. We then talk about the relationship between passions and understanding briefly in Hume's passionalism. The understanding is said to be the slave of passions. In the second question of this text, we will explore the relationship between passions and behaviours on the bases of Hume's passionalism. Passions are the original reason of behaviours, exploring passions and passions' reasons can give a good explanation to human's all kinds of behaviours. So to care about passions is indispensable and vital. We will concern directly about the real life in the third question. It tells us that it is important to pay attention to passions in our dailylife according to learning the reasons of some phenomena and problems in real life. It then tells us the practical significance of Hume's theory. Not only for the comprehending of society's moral construction, of person's growing up, of psychological problems, but also for the solutions of all those, there are something valuable which are deserved to be learnd. And this is exactly the practical significance that is given by Hume's passionalism.